Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon Stratis
Quite frankly, when you graduate and go to college or find a job, your grades are going to be more important than saying your on a FIRST team. A good college isn't going to sit back and say "well, FIRST makes up for the 1.5 GPA...", and a potential employer is going to look at it and say "1.5 GPA? This kid obviously doesn't have much motivation or commitment."
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I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. I agree that grades are very important for getting into the college you want, but I think that employers have been relying less and less on GPA to evaluate new hires. I also think that colleges are behind the times in this regard, but that's a different topic.
The company I work for probably wouldn't have noticed if I had left my GPA off my resume (and they certainly never asked about or requested a transcript). From what I've heard from other recent grads, this is becoming somewhat of a trend. Google has also made the news lately by stating that
"GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring.".
Obviously a *bad* GPA can hurt you. You are definitely correct in that a 1.5 GPA could be difficult to get passed. However, I think that whatever poor habits led to that would also show in other ways as well.
In the context of this discussion, I'm definitely a fan of a GPA requirement for the team. Team 2052 has a grade requirement for attending competitions and lettering, though our school only provides us with a list of how many classes the student is failing, and a pass/fail (no GPA or per-class grade list).
We also are more than happy to work with students to make exceptions. If they tell us that they are failing one class because they missed a test and that they are making it up in a week, we are more than happy to accommodate them.